by Rysa Walker
He shrugs on his coat and scribbles a phone number on a piece of notepaper. “This is my cell number, Anna, if you need to reach me. I’m—uh, I have a meeting I need to get to, but we should talk soon.”
I take the scrap of paper. He seems to be waiting for something. “You already have my number, right? You had the phone long enough.”
He has the good grace to look sheepish. “Yeah, I guess I do. I’ll call you. I need to get in touch with some people and see if we can get the case reopened, since we have some new information.”
“How will you explain?” I ask.
“An anonymous tip, I guess. They do happen from time to time. I’ll get them to start looking into any associates Lucas has named Craig, for starters. Eventually, I’ll see if they can find anything on the trafficking issue. It could be a day or two, though. I . . . uh, well, I’ve already called in a lot of favors over the past few years, so it may take a little persistence to convince them.”
Kelsey walks him to the door. “Mr. Porter, what about the phone call Anna received? And the note?”
He shoots me a look and his eyes narrow slightly. “I don’t know anything about that, Dr. Kelsey. If it does turn out that Anna needed to make those claims in order to get me here, well . . . I would certainly understand. I’m not sure I would have come otherwise, so I’m willing to forget the matter.”
I open my mouth to object, but Porter has already opened the door into the stairwell and is headed down to the exit.
“He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he?” Kelsey says as she returns to her desk. “Do you think he’ll ever admit he was trying to scare you away?”
“I doubt it. I’m surprised the stubborn old goat even believed it was Molly.” I half expect to hear a complaint about me dissing her grandfather, but Molly is quiet.
Kelsey glances at the clock, and I realize that her four o’clock appointment should be arriving any minute. I go to the sink to rinse out my cup. She follows me and gives my arm a squeeze. “So, Molly’s not gone, is she?”
“No.” I slide my mug back into its usual spot in the cupboard. “But she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to talk to Porter again. Maybe she’s right. I couldn’t push her back today, Kelsey. Building up my wall seems to work fine for keeping them contained when I’m in control, but it doesn’t work so well when I’m the one in the backseat. I was trying to take control . . . well, maybe not a hundred percent, but pretty close. Molly wasn’t going to budge until she finished talking to him.”
“How did that make you feel?”
I used to tease her about stereotypical therapist questions like that, and I suspect she’s thrown this one in to lighten the mood, more than anything else. I roll my eyes and feed her the textbook response. “It triggered a fight-or-flight response, Doctor Freud, with a strong sense of fear and rage because I didn’t have control. You know exactly how it made me feel.”
She gives me a half smile. “I do, just as you know that putting those emotions into words helps you cope with them. And speaking of coping, do you still have enough sleep medication in case the dreams start?”
I nod. The pills help, at least enough (usually) to keep me from waking up screaming that I can’t breathe, or that there’s a car coming straight toward me, or whatever sensation comes along with someone’s final memories. Libra has already had to put up with my dreams when one of my tenants vacated, and that woman died in her sleep. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like when Molly goes.
“I’ll see you on Tuesday. And, thanks, Kelsey,” I add as I head toward the door. “I couldn’t have gotten through this without you.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Call me if you need me before then, okay?”
I close the door to the stairwell. I’m one step from the bottom when I hear the squeal of rubber on asphalt. I push open the door, and a loud crack hits my ears, followed quickly by another. A gray sedan bounces off the curb at the far end of the parking lot, turning right. The man on the passenger side sees me at the door and raises a gun to his shoulder as the driver accelerates off toward Veirs Mill. There’s another cracking sound, a loud ping as the bullet hits the dumpster about twenty yards to my left, then a screech of brakes.
A second, much closer screech hits my ears as a small black car whips around the corner. The driver is young, maybe twenty, and his face seems familiar. My first thought, which makes no sense, is: Unfair. He’s even cuter than he used to be.
The guy flings the passenger-side door open, nearly clipping my leg. “Get in, Anna. They’re coming back around the block!”
“Do I know you? I think—”
“Get the hell in the car, Anna! They’ve shot Porter.”
Get in, Anna! It’s Aaron—oh my God, Pa!
I pile into the car and he heads across the lot, bouncing off the curb just a few feet away from where the gray sedan exited, turning the wrong way into a one-way alley. Thankfully, there’s no traffic and we make it to the intersection, where he hangs a sharp right onto Georgia Avenue. An ambulance whizzes past in the opposite direction.
Aaron who?
But Molly is too frantic to answer.
He punches the phone button on the car’s communications console and says, “Call Sam.”
A few seconds later, Sam—an older man, judging from the voice—says, “Aaron? You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Porter was shot, though.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sam says. He doesn’t sound surprised, however. Worried. Maybe a little annoyed, but almost like he expected this news.
I stare at Aaron as they talk, mentally thumbing through the scattered Molly files in my head, which are far too new to be neatly organized. He has a distinctive profile, the nose a bit long, but somehow it fits his face. Above-average height, broad shouldered, dark-reddish-brown hair. Jeans. A black windbreaker over a deep-green shirt. The color brings out the greenish flecks in his hazel eyes, which keep darting between the rearview mirror and the road ahead.
“At least he’s alive,” Aaron says. “Got him in the shoulder. Drive-by. Two men, gray or silver Ford . . . Focus, I think?”
“Any idea on the year?”
“Late model, 2017 or ’18, I’d say. Headed north on Georgia Avenue. One white, one Latino, but I don’t think either of them was Lucas. He’s moved up in the world . . . guess he can contract out his dirty work on occasion. Ambulance should take Porter to Holy Cross.”
“Heading there now. I’ll call this in to Daniel. Son of a bitch.”
“Sam? Just so you know, the girl is with me.”
A pause. “You think that’s wise?”
Aaron gives me a quick look out of the corner of his eye. “They shot at her, too, Sam. Something’s up.”
“Keep me posted.”
The connection ends, and without the distraction of their conversation, Molly’s pain is front and center.
“You said Porter is okay? How do you know?”
Aaron Whoever glances at me again. “I called an ambulance five minutes ago. They’ll get to him in time.”
It’s not just his face that’s familiar. His voice is familiar too, like I’ve heard it myself, not like something from Molly’s memory. I can’t pin it down, however.
I try to focus and tap into the few memories of Molly’s that are available. Quinn. His last name is Quinn. Molly had a crush on him, which I totally get. He’s borderline gorgeous.
And Molly trusted him. That trust is the only reason I got into the car with a complete stranger—a stranger who is driving much too fast and recklessly for my comfort—rather than doing the sensible thing and running back upstairs to Kelsey’s office when I heard gunfire.
Kelsey.
“We have to go back! What if they go into the building looking for me and—”
“Your doctor is safe. They won’t stick around long enough to go into the building when they hear sirens.”
And how the hell do you know that?
I’m tempted to actually ask the
question, but another question that hasn’t fully formed in my head is nagging at me. So I decide to focus on verifying his identity first. Let’s see how he feels about me knowing things I shouldn’t know.
“You’re Aaron. Aaron Quinn, right? You knew Molly. You know Porter. And apparently you know my name already, although I’ve no idea how.”
He nods once as he exits onto 495.
The question that was hanging midbrain finally takes form. It’s been maybe three minutes since I got into the car, and . . .
“Wait a second! You said you called the ambulance five minutes ago?”
Aaron edges the car onto the Beltway. “Yeah. I was watching the building. They were acting suspiciously, so I called 911.”
“But that would mean you called the cops. Not an ambulance. And why were you watching the building in the first place?”
“Like you said, I knew Molly. Plus, Porter is a friend.”
This time when he says Porter’s name the connection in my mind is almost like an audible click. “Oh, God! It was you on the phone!” I reach for the door handle instinctively, even though I know it would be suicide to fling it open on a highway, with cars zipping by on both sides. “You left the message about the van. You left the note at Bartholomew House.”
“What? No, I didn’t leave a note. But yeah, I called you. Porter doesn’t know anything about that, by the way. I wish you had listened and stayed away from him. I think he’ll be okay. But he’s not as young as he used to be, and . . .”
Molly curls up in the back of my mind, in the mental equivalent of the fetal position, crying. Which I understand, given the circumstances. She just learned that her grandmother is dead, and now she finds out Porter’s been wounded, too. But her emotional meltdown is very distracting when I’m trying to think. And a little constructive input from her would be really helpful right now, since she knows this Aaron guy a lot better than I do.
“There were two shots,” I say. “Well, three, but the last was aimed at me. Are you sure . . .”
“They hit his car with the second shot. He was lucky, though. Just a few inches closer and that bullet would’ve hit him, too.”
I process what he’s said, then return to what’s really bugging me.
“You’re the one who called me, but it wasn’t you in the van. That guy was darker, bald—pretty sure I saw a moustache.”
He shoots me an incredulous look. “Of course I wasn’t driving the freaking van! Why would you think that?”
“Did Porter even know? Or did you hire someone to scare me away without telling him?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Anna? I didn’t hire anyone. I didn’t have anything to do with the van. I was trying to convince you to keep away from Porter so that neither of you would get hurt. So they’d leave you alone. But you didn’t listen.”
He’s a good actor. If I hadn’t known the time that his warning call came in, I might have believed him. I debate whether to play that trump card or keep quiet and save what I know for the police. Assuming, of course, that I make it to the police. Assuming, of course, that he’s not working with whoever shot Porter. Or with this Lucas. Or Craig.
I am in so, so deep.
No. I’ll keep the information about the van to myself for now. “Molly trusted you.”
That causes him to flinch. He switches to the inner lane and speeds up to around seventy, glancing again at the rearview mirror before he speaks. “Molly was a friend. I just wish I’d been around three years ago. Maybe I could have . . .” He trails off, shaking his head.
Again, my intuition tells me he’s being honest, that I should believe him. That’s the only reason I can imagine why I do a complete one-eighty on telling him what I know about the van in the space of a minute. “You say you didn’t have anything to do with the van. But you left that message three hours before it came anywhere near us.”
He keeps his eyes fixed on the lane ahead, but his face darkens.
“So the way I see it, the most logical explanation is that you hired the van. Or you know who did. Unless, of course, you have some sort of crystal ball that tells the future.”
He’s silent for a long moment, then says, “It’s not exactly a crystal ball.”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t.
“I’m going to need a little more than that.”
“Is the most logical explanation always the correct one, Anna?”
“Not always,” I admit, thinking back to Deo’s earlier comment on the same subject. In my case, the most logical explanation isn’t even usually the correct one.
We drive in silence for a few minutes. “Can I at least know where you’re taking me?”
“The first place I could think of that’s safe. At least I’m pretty sure it’s safe. I don’t think we were followed, and you can’t go back to Bartholomew House just yet.”
“I need to call Deo. I was supposed to meet him after my appointment. And, oh—jeez, I didn’t even think. Kelsey will know about Porter by now. She’ll be worried. And maybe she has an update on his condition?”
“Porter’s alive . . .”
“You can’t know that. He could be dead for all you know.” A fresh wail from Molly reminds me that I probably shouldn’t have said that. I pull up Kelsey’s number on my phone. “They could have gone upstairs and shot Kelsey, too. And for all I know, you could be working with them.”
“Anna, please.” He puts his hand on my arm, squeezing lightly, his eyes pleading. “Okay, fine, if it will make you feel better. Call them. Tell them you’re safe. Tell them you’re with a friend.”
“But I’m not sure that either of those things is true,” I say, pulling my arm away. “And Deo won’t believe it for a minute.”
“Why not?”
Because I don’t have any friends aside from Deo, I think. But I just say, “He knows me well enough to tell when I’m lying.”
“Then don’t let it be a lie. I am not going to hurt you. I’m trying to figure out the best way to keep you safe. And I’ll tell you everything, or at least as much as I can, as soon as we get there.”
“Get where?” I mutter under my breath as I wait for Kelsey to pick up.
Kelsey’s voice is frantic when she answers. “Oh, thank heavens, Anna! Are you okay? The police are swarming the parking lot. Mr. Porter—”
“Porter?” I ask lamely. “What happened?”
“He was shot. They said the shooter must have mistaken him for someone else. Probably drug related.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s alive, that’s all they could tell me. But where are you?”
“I . . . I’m with a friend. We had plans after my appointment, but I heard shots as we were driving away and then the sirens. I realized you might have been worried about me.”
“Well, I was worried when the police came up a minute ago, but like I told them, I didn’t hear the shots. I was in the front with my next patient, and I guess the sound machine drowned it out.” She pauses. “And you’re sure you’re okay?”
I glance over at Aaron. Part of me is tempted to send her a coded message like they do in the movies. I could say I’ll see her at our appointment on Monday (which has been her regular day off as long as I can remember, because she sees patients on Saturdays) or maybe remind her to feed the fish in her aquarium (that she got rid of two years ago).
But I don’t. “I’m fine. I’ll see you on Tuesday, okay?”
“Okay,” she answers, a tiny hint of doubt in her voice. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. And could you call me if you hear anything more about Mr. Porter?”
Deo is not as easy, but I knew he wouldn’t be. I end up asking him to just trust me, and I promise to call him again in half an hour. And even then, I have to tell him about Porter, and that I’m with a friend of Molly’s. I even have to give him Aaron’s name, which Aaron clearly doesn’t like, judging from his expression.
“Okay,” I tell Aaron, once I
’ve hung up. “Just so you know, Deo will call Dr. Kelsey, the police, the FBI, the entire Avengers team, and anyone else he can think of if I don’t check back in half an hour.”
Aaron rolls his eyes. “You have a very possessive boyfriend.”
I start to correct him, but maybe having Aaron think Deo’s my overprotective boyfriend is a good thing. I could say he’s at the gym, lifting weights.
I feel a tiny wave of disapproval from Molly as I settle back into my seat, the first real reaction I’ve felt from her in several minutes.
You shouldn’t lie to Aaron. He’s trying to help.
Really? Because I think the jury’s still out on that one.
“Not my boyfriend,” I say. “More like my brother. But yeah, he’ll go crazy if he doesn’t hear from me—he’s halfway there already, given what I told him about Porter.”
We’re moving north on I-95 now, toward Baltimore. After a few minutes, Aaron eases into the lane for the Beltsville exit.
“So can you tell me where we’re headed now or is it still top secret?”
“I have the key to a place that belongs to some friends. I house-sit for them on occasion, take care of the cat and so forth. They’re in West Virginia for two weeks—a second honeymoon of sorts. No one outside of family would connect me to them, and only Sam and my sister know I’m back in town, so . . .”
He seems to feel this should reassure me. It doesn’t. Not one little bit.
What I’m thinking must show on my face, because after a few seconds he says, “Anna, the very last thing on my mind is hurting you. In any way. I’ve seen evidence of too many girls mistreated lately. You will be safe with me. You said Molly trusted me. Can you try to trust me, too?”
In my experience, trust isn’t something you try. It’s either there or not, and in my case, trusting Aaron seems to be an on-again, off-again thing, depending on whether I’m relying on gut instinct, which is mostly tied to Molly’s memories, or relying on my own logic, which says I should bail at the first stoplight and take off running.
